Back in Time!
by Becablanca
Summary: Percy, Annabeth, Nico, Thalia, and my OC Becky go back in time to read the books with the gods.
1. Prologue

**Think of Becky as Megan Fox , that's how I do!**

"Come on, Annabeth!"Becky ran after her

"No! I will not go through the torture of a make over!"

"If you don't let me, I'll get mom to do it!"

Annabeth abruptly turned around, "Let's go then!"

"I thought so."

"Hold on tight!" and with that, she shadowed traveled them to her room on Olympus **. (A/N Let me fill you in, Becky is a daughter of Aphrodite and Hephaestus, yes she is a minor goddess, goddess of youth and blessings so she has the power of all demigods combined, pretty powerful. Oh! And she is a fire user ,she is a daughter of the god of fire after all!)**

"This isn't my room."

"I think we're in the throne room."

"WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE!"

"What! Grandpa, don't you know me!"

"Becky?" Zeus said.

"But you're 9 years old!"

"Wait, what year is this?" Annabeth asked.

"2003," Athena answered.

"What!" Becky screamed, "We went back in time! But I was going to give you a makeover, and Percy wouldn't have been able to take his eyes off you!" She giggled the last part.

"Why are we here anyway?"

"That's what I was thinking!" Athena said.

"Who's Percy?" That, of course, was Aphrodite.

Just then, a note flew by:

Dear fellow friends,

It is I, the awesome Apollo, and Hermes, we have sent you back in

time to read Percy's books. Your friends will arrive shortly.

Sincerely,

Apollo, and Hermes.

"Oh, so you just felt the need to delay my makeover! I WILL GET YOU!" Becky yelled at the sky.

Two very black haired boys suddenly landed on the ground, and a girl landed gracefully beside them.

A book quickly followed.

"Hmm. The Lightning Thief. Let's start reading." Becky announced.

The future peoples settled on the seats Becky had popped in for them and they started to read.

**Yes! First chapter done! Review!**


	2. I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PREALGEBRA TE

**Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson or any of the characters except for Becky. Some characters may be a little OOC.**

Chapter Two

I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER

**I Accidentally Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher**

**"Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood."**Becky read.

"Really," said Becky, interrupting herself," Because I would have thought it's pretty cool. Apart from the getting killed in horribly disgusting ways part.

** If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:**

"Take cover! It's going to blow!"

**close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

"I guess that might work for a while," said Annabeth.

** Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**** If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**** But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before _they _sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

"Suspicious!" Becky said mysteriously.

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

"You didn't warn me!" Nico and Thalia said at the same time and they both blushed a deep red.

**My name is Percy Jackson.**** I'm twelve years old. Until a _few _months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

**Am I a troubled kid?**

"Yes!" all the demigods, except Percy , said.

**Yeah. You could say that.**

"Ha! Even _you_ admit it!" Nico gloated.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

"Sounds like fun!" Athena and Annabeth chorused.

"No! It sounds like torture!" said Poseidon

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

Poseidon blushed.

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.**

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

"Chiron!" Becky said immediately.

** I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

**Boy, was I wrong.**

"When are you not," Annabeth whispered to Percy.

**See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

Hermes and Apollo burst out laughing.

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. **

By now Hermes and Apollo were rolling on the floor.

**And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

"Never gonna' happen!" Becky and Thalia said simultaneously

**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

"I'm sure he'd be thrilled to hear what you think of him!" said Thalia

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

"He's blowing his cover!" said, surprisingly, Dionysus.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.**

"Yes , PLEASE, this story needs some action!" you can guess who said that.

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.**

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

**"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

"NOOO!"

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there.**

"YEAHH!"

**In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a _stele, _for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

"I recognize that from somewhere," thought Hades.

**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you _shut up_?"**

**It came out louder than I meant it to.**

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

**My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

**"And he _did _this because ..."**

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god,**** and—"**

**"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

"WHAT!"

Becky hurriedly kept reading.

**"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.**

**And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

"_Eeew!_ Is right," said Hera

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

**Some snickers from the group.**

"Why? He got it right!"

**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids."**

"It might if you're going to work at a museum ," Athena pointed out.

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

"Busted," Ares muttered.

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

"I THINK LIKE A GOAT!"

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.**

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming.**

**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.**

"Like he should" said Annabeth.

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever _lived, _and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be _as good; _he expected me to be _better. _And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

"Probably was," said Athena thoughtfully.

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

"Hmm? Why are we fighting?" Zeus asked Poseidon.

"No offense, but you're always fighting," Becky told Zeus.

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from _that _school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

"_You_ are a loser freak, but Grover isn't." said Becky.

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

There was a second of silence and then everyone burst out laughing.(A/N Yes, EVERYONE.)

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

"POSEIDON!"

"We will discuss this when we finish the chapter," said Poseidon.

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

Zeus and Hades glared at Poseidon.

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. _I _pushed her."**

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—_will_—stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "_Now_."**

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

**I wasn't so sure.**

**I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of **

**the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.**

**Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on _Tom Sawyer _from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

"HADES!"

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

**"**Riptide to the rescue!" Becky said so loud it practically burst everyone's eardrums.

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

"Wimp!" Ares said before receiving a death glare from Becky.

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

"She can drop the honey thing!"

**And she flew straight at me.**

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. _Hisss!_**

**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our _teacher._ Duh!"**

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"Grover!"

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead.**

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

"Allright"announced Becky" Who wants to read next. How 'bout Grover," she said as he came hurtling towards the ground.

"Fine!" he grabbed the book and started to read. "

_**Yay! second chapter done! REVIEW!**_


	3. THREE OLD LADIES KNIT THE SOCKS OF DEATH

_**I'm SOOO sorry I haven't updated in a long time.**_

_**Magicmarauder171 : Thanks for the advice, it means a lot, it's kind of hard to come up with ideas , but I'll try my best. also, Becky does have a love interest, but it's not Apollo.**_

_**Jayla Daughter of Apollo : Thanks for telling me, this is my first fanfic so i'm having difficulty writing it. I'll try my best not to make her Mary Sue.**_

"Wait, What?"

Becky quickly explained what they were doing.

"**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death,"**

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.**

**This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.**

**Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

**It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.**

**Almost.**

**But Grover couldn't fool me.**

**When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

**Something was going on. Something **_**had **_**happened at the museum.**

"No,duh!" said Thalia.

,**I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room.**

**A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

**I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from D's to F's.**

**I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends.**

"Yeah!" yelled Ares.

**I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.**

**Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

Everyone burst out laughing.

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

**Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

**I was homesick**

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side,**

**Even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

**And yet… there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange.**

**I was worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

**I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

**As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.**

**I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-or-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.**

**The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the **_**Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology **_**across my dorm room**

**Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon,**

**Or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

**I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.**

**I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. **_**I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**_

"Ominous," said Nico.

**I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

**I'd never asked a teacher for help before**

**Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.** **I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.**

**I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said,**

"… **worried about Percy, sir."**

**I froze.**

**I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

**I inched closer.**

"… **alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the **_**school**_**! Now that we know for sure, and **_**they **_**know too—"**

"**We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

"**But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead line—"**

"**Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

"**Sir, he **_**saw**_** her… ."**

"**His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

"**Sir, I … I can't fail in my duties again."**

**Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

"**You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

**The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

**Mr. Brunner went silent.**

**My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

**A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

**A few seconds later I heard a slow **_**clop-clop-clop,**_** like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

"**Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn …"**

"**Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

"**Don't remind me."**

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

"**Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

**I didn't answer.**

"**You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

"**Just… tired."**

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression.**

**And started getting ready for bed.**

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kid of danger.**

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

**My eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

"**Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's … it's for the best."**

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

"**I mean …" Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

**My eyes stung.**

Percy blushed.

**Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

"**Right," I said, trembling.**

"**No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say … you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

"**Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

"**Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were **_**rich**_** juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

"Hey!" said Becky,"I take offence to that."

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

**What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

"**Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

"Rude much!" muttered Annabeth.

**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had,** **So there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

**During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

"That's going to scare me out of my wits," announced Grover.

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

**Grover's eye twitched. "How much **_**did**_** you hear?"**

"**Oh … not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

**He winced. "Look, Percy … I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

"Grover," Becky told Grover," You're such a bad liar, it's sad.

"**Grover—"**

"**And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and …"**

"**Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

**His ears turned pink.**

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer."**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

_**Grover Underwood**_

_**Keeper**_

_**Half-Blood Hill**_

_**Long Island, New York**_

_**(800) 099-0009**_

"**What's Half—"**

"**Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um … summer address."**

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

"**Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

**He nodded. "Or …or if you need me."**

**Why would I need you?"**

"**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

**I stared at him.**

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me.**

**And here he was acting like he was the one who defended **_**me**_**.**

"**Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

**There was a huge grinding noise under out feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

"**Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

"**Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

"Oh, no... " Poseidon paled.

"**Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

"**Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears.**

**I heard Grover catch his breath.**

"**We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

"**What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

"**Come on!" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear the **_**snip**_** across four lanes of traffic.**

"It's _his_, right?" Annabeth asked Percy.

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**.

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

**The passengers cheered.**

"**Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

"**Grover?"**

"**Yeah?"**

"**What are you not telling me?"**

**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

"**You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like … Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

"**The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

"**Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

"**This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like last time."**

"**What last time?"**

"**Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

"**Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

"**Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

"**Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

"**Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

**He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

"Probably was!" said Apollo, trying to cheer people up.

"Who wants to read next?" asked Grover.

"I will!", standing there was...

**_haha, cliffie!_**

**_R&R_**


	4. AN

Hi, guys! just me saying i'm propably not goin to update for a while because, 1. school starts soon. and my mom want to finish redoing my room in 2 days. 3.i'm working extra hard on the next chapter.


	5. Chapter GROVER UNEXPECTEDLY LOSES HIS PA

**Thalico fans, you might as well just abandon the story now. All hopes of them together are over. Sorry!**

"Piper!" Becky squeals as she gets up to hug her sister,"You're here!"

"I'm here!"

"You're here!"

"I'm here!", she looks around,"Where _are_ we?"

"We're on Olympus, silly!"

"Right." She looks at Annabeth, who's now sitting on the floor, her head back, and Percy playing with her hair.

Becky squeals again, this time her voice significantly higher.

"Calm down, Becky!" says Nico as he puts his feet where Annabeth had previously been sitting.

"Fiiiine!"

"It looks different, Annabeth," says Piper with questioning eyes.

"That's_ probably_ because we're in the past."

"Oh," says Piper calmly,"Wait, _what_?!"

"Can we keep reading now?" says Grover with a bored look on his face.

"Not until somebody answers my question!" screams Piper frantically.

"Basically, we went back in time, YADA YADA, we're reading Percy's books, YADA YADA, you popped in, YADA YADA, and _you_ offered to read, so _read_," Becky says as if she has something better to do.

"When I said 'Calm Down' I didn't mean act like _this_," Nico says with an insulted face.

"I know, I'm being cold. Mom thinks I have a problem," she put on an apologetic face, but it soon morphs into a mean one," but why are _you_ offended? I wasn't talking to you. And even if I was, I didn't say anything_ mean_!"

He gave her a disappointed look.

"Right, sorry," she said to Piper and looked down as if someone was yelling at her.

"I'll read," says Grover, trying to get through the awkward moment.

"No, I will!" Piper says with a new, clean, happy face," After all, I did offer to!"

Becky gives her a smile, pops in a new couch, and invites Piper to sit with her.

Grover hands her the book.

**Grover unexpectedly loses his pants.**"

"That's a disturbing thought." says Annabeth a she makes a disgusted face.

**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

Grover glares at Percy. "Thanks."

**I know, I know. It was rude**

Becky points a delicate finger at Percy," Only I am allowed to be rude. _You_, mister," she says, her red nail polish turning purple," are not."

"What's up with your nail?" asks Percy bluntly.

"Oh, birthday present from mom. It changes color depending on my mood," she replies tersely.

"What's red? What's purple?" asks Annabeth.

Becky blushes then says," That's for_ me_ to know, and you to,_ hopefully_, never find out.

"Hello! We're still here!" Hera says, getting bored of looking around the room for the millionth time that day, "The tall, shiny, granite columns that are holding up the roof shimmer\ as the sunlight, streaming in through the window, hits it," she thought.(I know. Random.)

Piper continued reading,** "But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering 'Why does this always happen?' and 'Why does it always have to he sixth grade?"**

Start the stares at Grover.

**"Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, and then made a beeline for the restroom."**

"Grover, you're SO ..._ weird_!" says Thalia with a confused face.

**"Instead of waiting, ****I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

**''East One-hundred-and-fourth and First,'' I told the driver."**

"I am amazing!" says Nico with a troublesome look on his face.

"Not this again!" Both Becky and Thalia say.

"Not _what_ again?" asks Aphrodite as she looked up from her Favorite Couples notebook.

"Oh, nothing," says Annabeth," The three just got into a fight about who was, as they would put it, 'amazinger'."

**A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

**Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world,**

"Nuh, uh! _That's_ me." Becky cried out.

"Oh, Becky! Why in the world are you SO conceited?" asks Percy, shooting her a look.

"Hmph!" she tilts her chin up, looking the other way.

**which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**

**Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

**The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

"That's SO sweet!", both Becky and her Mom squeal.

**I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile.**

**My mom doesn't like to talk about him because ****_it _****makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

**See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

**Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

"You're mom's REALLY clever," comments Athena.

**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano,**

**who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him,** **then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nick named him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.**

**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

**Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

**"Where's my mom?"**

**"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

**That was it. No ****_Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?_**

**Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tusk less walrus**

"THAT'S a weird description!" says Annabeth.

**in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

**He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before.**

**He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

"WHAT?!", yells Poseidon.

**"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

**He raised a greasy eyebrow.**

**Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

**"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof; he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

"At least some people aren't so rude," says Becky as she glares at the book.

Percy gives her a look and says," Look who's talking,"

"Excuse me!?"

**"Am I ****_right_****?****_" _****Gabe repeated.**

**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

"EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!" screams Aphrodite in her high pitched voice.

**"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

**"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

**Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.**

**I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

**"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

"YYUUMM!" said Nico.

**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

**I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

**I gritted my teeth.**

**My mom is the nicest lady in the world.**

**She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

**For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.**

**I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

**Until that trip to the museum...**

**"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

**"No, Mom."**

"You shouldn't lie to your mom ,Percy," Says Becky.

"Again, look who's talking."

**.****I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

**"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

**"Three nights—same cabin."**

**"When?"**

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

**I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

**Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

**I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

**"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

**"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

**"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your step father is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

"I LOVE guacamole!" screams Becky in Nico's ear.

**Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

**"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

**"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

**"We'll be very careful."**

**Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

**Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

**"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

**"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

"Seriously?"

**He went back to his game.**

**"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

**But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

**An hour later we were ready to leave.**

**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

"It's a car," says Becky gritting her teeth," Not a PERSON."

**Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from cannon.**

**Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

**I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets,**

**and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

**I loved the place.**

"Ooof course you do," says Thalia as if she was bored.

**We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.**

**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

**I guess I should explain the blue food.**

**See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father.**

**Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

**"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

Percy smiled.

**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

**I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

**"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"**

**She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

**"But... he knew me as a baby."**

**"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

**I felt angry at my father.**

"Don't worry," says Percy to Poseidon," Not anymore."

**Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

**"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

**"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."**

**"Because you don't want me around?"**

"Percy!" Annabeth yelled. "That's not true and you know it!"

**I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I ****_have _****to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

**"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

**"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

**"Safe from what?"**

**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head**

**Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

"Wow."

**In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

**I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

**"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

**"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

**"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

"Really?" asked Becky creepily stroking her chin.

**My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

**"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."**

**"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."**

**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

**That night I had a vivid dream.**

**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.**

"Weird dream." Becky said dreamily.

**The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**

**I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion.**

**But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.**

**Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

**Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover**.**"**

**"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

**My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

**"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

**I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

**_"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!"_**

**he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you ****_tell _****her?"**

**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—** **and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ..."**

"What!"

Artemis hit Apollo in the head.

**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: ****_"Percy. _****Tell me ****_now_****!"**

**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

**She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. ****_Go_****!****_"_**

**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

**_SO sorry for such a long wait! I'm not going to make excuses, I was being lazy. Sorry for not that many comments in the middle, I was rushing to update. Merry Christmas! Anyone on vacation? I'm at my Grandma's house in Mexico. It's currently 11:45 here. If anybody has any ideas review. Review even if you don't have ideas. Please no comments on Becky being Mary-Sue, I'm going through a huge case of writer's block. I'll try to update as soon as I can ,but it might take a while. Keep a lookout anyways. Again, Merry Christmas!_**

**_~Bex_**


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